You instead

On the heels of Electric Picnic, You Instead will undoubtedly speak to festival lovers. Well, the festival lovers whose weekend of great music was ruined by the unfortunate presence of narcissistic rockstar wannabes, drunken idiots, and that unfortunate hook-up that you can’t explain and you’d rather forget – much like your denim hot-pants, Native American headdress and neon shutter glasses. It all seemed like such a good idea at the time...
As must have You Instead. A potentially fun and frothy frolic through pheromone-fuelled festival flirtation, Luke Treadway plays Adam, the successful and cocky frontman of American indie band The Make. Upon arriving at a music festival, he’s almost immediately handcuffed to punk girl Morello (Natalia Tena.) With important gigs looming for both of them and unimpressed significant others in tow, the two must overcome their differences and…

Let’s leave it there. You know what’s going to happen. What you can’t imagine is how badly it’s executed. Shot on location at T in the Park, You Instead does manage to capture the dizzying messiness of music festivals, mainly by being a complete mess itself. Jumping between stock concert footage to the godawful scripted portions to an in-feature documentary and back again, there’s no aesthetic or narrative flow to the visuals, which waste the brilliantly atmospheric settings of fairground rides and intimate backstage concerts.
Also wasted are the two leads. Treadaway and Tena’s obnoxious characters share no chemistry, and the only invigorating or romantic moments of their relationship come from a cover of ‘Tainted Love’ and the angelic Jo Mango’s performance of ‘The Black Sun.’ But even the music choice becomes questionable, as burgeoning romances are accompanied by Frightened Rabbit’s ‘Keep Yourself Warm’, whose repeated refrain of “You won’t find love in a hole” seems to be completely at odds with the film’s central “relationship.”

With painfully bad acting from the supporting cast – actual musician Newton Faulkner manages to outshine them all – buy the soundtrack instead.